An important criterion for advertisers in determining the effectiveness of an advertising campaign is the number of “impressions” a given advertisement makes with a user of interactive entertainment. Impressions refer to the exposure a user has had to an ad or ad campaign. Impressions are typically indexed in to the number of times a potential consumer views a particular advertisement. For example, a print advertisement located in a kiosk in a shopping center might be viewed by 1,000 shoppers over the course of an afternoon. It could be said that the particular advertisement enjoyed 1,000 impressions as each shopper walked past the kiosk and viewed the goods or services advertised therein.
The growth of the Internet and the popularity of interactive entertainment such as video games have led to opportunities for advertising within video games. Video games and other forms of interactive entertainment have been increasingly popular among members of demographic groups sought after by advertisers. Consequently, advertisers are willing to pay to have advertisements for their products and/or services within interactive entertainment, such as video games.
There have been—and continue to be—numerous cases wherein actual advertisements of advertisers are deployed and displayed within a video game environment. A classic example is in a driving game, wherein advertisements are pasted onto billboards around a driving course as illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,946,664 and 6,539,544, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference. With such in-game advertising, the software publishing company that creates the video game identifies an advertiser, creates texture data based on ad copy provided by the advertiser and places this texture data representative of an advertisement in the video game environment (i.e., posting the advertisement on the billboard).
U.S. Pat. No. 5,946,664 to Kan Ebisawa describes the general notion of using a network to replacing an asset within a game using a texture, e.g., billboard. Later schemes for calculating a magnitude of an advertising impressing based on a position of a frustum of a camera proximity and time exposure to a game asset.
Placement of advertisements in the virtual environments of computer video games may be enhanced by matching ads to demographic data of the game player, e.g. as described, e.g., in U.S. Pat. No. 6,036,601, which is incorporated herein by reference. An ad server coordinates the matching of ads to demographic data of the game player and properly accommodates ads in formats from game information provided by source of game software. Statistics related to ad impressions may be retrieved from the game player's computer or console to rate viewing effectiveness for ad placement confirmation and billing purposes.
There are numerous formulae for determining whether an impression has occurred. A typical formula takes into account factors such as (a) whether an advertisement was displayed to the user, e.g., on a video screen; (b) how long the ad was visible to the user; (c) where the ad appeared on the screen; (d) how large the ad was relative to the size of the screen. US Published patent application 20070079331, which is incorporated herein by reference, describes examples of possible systems and methods for determining advertising impressions in the context of a video game. Basic schemes for calculating a magnitude or quality of a viewer impression of a game asset may be based on, e.g., a frustum of the camera, proximity and exposure to the asset.
The number of advertising impressions generated by a user during interactive entertainment is somewhat dependent on the user's activity during an interactive entertainment session. Consequently, the number of impressions generated may vary from one user to another for the same interactive entertainment activity. Attempts have been made to enhance the number of user impressions of video game advertisements by directing the viewer's attention to the ads. For example, in 1997 in a game called RTIME Rocks a virtual vector compass pointed the user in the direction of the nearest advertising asset in the game. However, an individual user may still choose to ignore the compass and valuable advertising impressions may be missed as a result.
It is within this context that embodiments of the invention arise.